


A Rose for Emily

by citrusella



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Dead Body, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, partially set in the 1930s, questionable (read: wholly incorrect) ways of dealing with decedent affairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 05:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11799504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusella/pseuds/citrusella
Summary: What if Rose wanted to spend the rest of her life with someone before Greg?...It's safe to say she has a skeleton in her closet.





	A Rose for Emily

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I didn't make the stuff that happened "offscreen" too subtle or the entire underlying plot will be lost on my readers
> 
> shoot

"I want some poison," Emily had said to the man in the general store. She worked in the lighthouse above the temple, and her face showed it, her brow in a permanent furrow and her eyes intense as if constantly on the watch for ships coming into shore.

"I want some poison."

The man was taken aback for a moment at the woman's matter-of-fact declaration. "Um, yes, of course. What kind? Are you trying to get rid of rats? Insects? I could walk you through—"

"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."

He rattled off a few. "Those could kill a rhinoceros, or a whale, but you probably don't need anything near—"

"Arsenic," Emily said. "Is that one good?"

"Is…? Yes, but… but what you want—"

"I want arsenic."

He looked down at her stocky form beneath him. She stood as tall as a four foot ten woman could, her intense eyes staring right back at him, seeming like if they stared hard enough, they might steal his soul.

"Um… all right," he said, "but I can't legally sell it to you without knowing what you'll use it for."

She didn't answer but continued her soul-stealing stare until he looked away without a word and packed it up for her.

* * *

When people first saw Rose with Emily, they had said, "Emily will marry her". Or, y'know, whatever gems did, if they didn't get married. Then they said, "perhaps Emily will convince her", because to date they had only seen Rose Quartz with men and for some reason they could not fathom that perhaps one's gender didn't matter to Rose. Later they said, "poor Emily" as she and Rose would be out on the town, their heads held high, their hands intertwined, as if it seemed Rose was just stringing her along, like she seemed to string everyone along before eventually letting them go like they no longer mattered to her.

For a long time, things went on like this and it didn't seem they'd change. Then, all of a sudden, it looked sure that the two would marry. Emily had bought a gold ring engraved with the shape of a Rose, and she'd brought all her clothing—even her nightgowns—to the temple. When they were out together, people would hear them whisper of "eternal life together", "pink", and "hoping my hardest that this will work". And people said, "it seems they _did_ get married."

But that was the last they saw of Emily. And of Rose Quartz, too, for awhile. Sometimes Amethyst would be seen on the town, or Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl would come out to destroy a monster, but Rose was mysteriously absent. Sometimes, if someone were to peek above the wooden fence surrounding the beach, they might have seen her warping from or to the temple, but for close to half a year no one saw her out in the city.

When they next saw Rose, there was a different quality about her. She seemed… cold, distanced, as if remembering events long ago.

By the time she birthed Steven, she was back to as close to her normal self as could be expected. Which… honestly wasn't _that_ surprising, but everyone thought that perhaps 70 years was different to a gem than it was to a person. In that time, no one else had come to visit the temple, save Greg, and by that time, Emily had been long forgotten, a completely new crop of people who had never even known the woman now forming the backbone of the town.

When she gave her son her gem, Greg suggested they hold a funeral. It could be in the temple, a way to express their affection for such a fallen monument, a beloved friend and comrade. Maybe they could even invite the town?

But for all their time spent there, the gems did not know the town, not really, and further, these sorts of human ceremonies were not their way and so, in their eyes, were wholly unnecessary.

* * *

No one other than Rose herself had been in Rose's room for over eighty years, and it was many years after her departure when it opened again. The first several times had seemed innocuous enough, but there are only so many times one can enter a room before discovering all its nooks and crannies. And one day, that was precisely what Steven did.

That day, when he wandered to a far edge of the room, he discovered a construct that he'd never noticed—one apparently Rose had never _dismissed_ —a tall, folding screen that seemed to be holding yet another of his mother's secrets.

As he neared the screen, he noticed the clothing hung upon it first—floral dresses that looked incredibly old, maybe even as old as… hmm… Pearl had shown him pictures… the 1920s or '30s? A hat adorned the corner of the screen and a woman's shoes sat at the foot of its edge.

The image he found as he rounded the screen was of a decidedly different nature than the once-fashionable clothing hung on the other side.

A woman lay motionless on an old-fashioned chaise.

For a long while, he just stood there, looking in horror at the fleshless grin before him. What was left of her, rotted beneath what remained of her nightgown, would have been irremovable from the piece of furniture if said furniture had been real as opposed to a creation of the room.

Steven wasn't sure how long it took him to be able to extricate himself from the macabre scene, but he knew that it was long enough that when he re-entered the beach house, the light outside had faded and Pearl had asked him what he was doing in there. He didn't know how to answer.

If he had been capable of tearing his eyes from the body on the bed, he might have noticed the writing scrawled about seven and a half feet up the screen.

_It didn't work._


End file.
